The plight of the federal employee took a foreboding turn last week when lawmakers from both chambers recommended that the deficit supercommittee consider cuts to government benefits.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction must find at least $1.3 trillion in savings that Congress can approve by the end of the year or trigger across-the-board cuts to federal agencies. Since lawmakers created the supercommittee in an August deal to raise the debt ceiling, federal employees have worried that the panel would target them.

That hunch gained credence Friday, when House and Senate committees submitted their recommendations to the panel for potential savings.

In the Senate, Homeland Security and Governmental Reform Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) in supporting a one-year extension to the current federal pay freeze and a plan to base retirement payouts on the top five years of a worker's salary (E&ENews PM, Oct. 14).

On the House side, Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) went further, suggesting the pay freeze extend through 2015. He also called for the phasing out of the Federal Retirement System, a 10 percent reduction in the workforce and the elimination of the tenure-based raises called "step increases."

Union officials admitted yesterday that the new wave of recommended cuts did not help their cause. But they said their strategy would not change: namely, lobbying supercommittee members to go easy on a workforce that already suffers from a pay freeze and tightening budgets.

"It doesn't change anything for us in terms of what we are doing," said Beth Moten, the legislative and political director for the American Federation of Government Employees. "Even if they sent a love letter to us ... we wouldn't change what we are doing."

So far, AFGE's efforts have included meeting with the staffs of the six Democratic lawmakers on the supercommittee: Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Patty Murray of Washington and John Kerry of Massachusetts, as well as Reps. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California.

Their message, Moten said, is "you can't demoralize the workforce, shrink budgets, shrink staffs and say business as usual."

The National Treasury Employees Union has taken a similar tack, sending letters to the supercommittee and members of Congress. Last week, NTEU President Colleen Kelley said Issa's proposal would "effectively devastate the U.S. civil service."

A spokesman yesterday said the group would continue in that vein, though he declined to comment further.

Overall, Democrats have supported the preservation of employees' benefits; House Oversight Committee Democrats have railed against additional cuts to the workforce (E&ENews PM, Oct. 13).

But there are indications that there is room for compromise. Last month, President Obama suggested raising employees' retirement contribution by 1.2 percent and eliminating the annuity supplement for new hires.

Though unions have criticized such proposals directly, they have mostly tried to refocus the conversation on federal contractors, who cost the government far more than public employees.

Moten said AFGE recently calculated the savings of capping the government-funded salaries of all contractors to $200,000 a year. Such a move would result in savings of $50 billion over 10 years, she said.

"I am shocked at what these elected officials have done to federal employees, while doing little to curb the massive taxpayer-funded bailouts to government contractors," AFGE President John Gage said last week. "Federal employees have sacrificed more than any other group, giving up two years of pay increases to help lower the country's deficit. It's time to pass the hat and ask others to pay their fair share."